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Google Play Games Services Dropping Support for iOS; Removes Gifts, Requests and More on Android

After a few years of allowing cross-platform game developers use Play Games Services tools, Google in a blog post said that support for iOS will be dropped due to low usage. The Google Play Games Services provides tools to help developers analyse and optimise their games for users on Android, iOS, and the Web.

Removing iOS support means developers will not be able to use features from Play Games Services for iOS games. Additionally, Google’s latest Native SDK release (2.3) will not be supporting iOS and will completely drop support and updates for iOS SDK. Google already ended support for adding new iOS accounts to Google Play Games Services in December.

According to the Android Developers Blog, Google will also be withdrawing some Play Games Services (GPGS) features on Android based on developer feedback. These features include Gifts, Requests, and Quests, which have received low usage from developers. Meanwhile, engagement and reporting tools continue to be used extensively and the company will be focussing its development on these.

For developers who do use features like Gifts, Requests, and Quests, Google says it will keep them for a period of 12 months, and will pull them down by March 31, 2018. Other features such as Sign-in, Achievements, Leaderboards, and Multiplayer will continue to be offered.

Google Play Games Services was launched in 2013 that allowed game developers to use tools that could let the add cross-platform features such as in-game gifts, achievements and others for games made for the Web, Android, and iOS. In its recent blog, Google says that its “working hard on future GPGS updates” and is “strongly committed to providing high quality services for Games, including new tools such as official Firebase support for Unity and C++ developers, and integration with Firebase Analytics. We may get a taste of these planned updates at the upcoming Google I/O conference.